Hamilton Colloquium Series

Quantising a black hole can be done starting with conventional physics. We just assume matter to keep the form of point particles until they come close to the horizon. The gravitational back reaction of these particles generates a novel relation between particles going in and particles going out, enabling us to transform in-going particles into out-going ones. This transformation removes “firewalls” along the future and past horizons, but it strongly affects space-time inside a black hole. It subsequently allows us, and indeed forces us, to identify antipodal points on the horizon. We argue that this exotic modification of the boundary condition is the only way to restore unitarity for the quantum evolution operator, and to identify the black hole microstates. Some mysteries, however, remain unresolved.